NeonTube using Thinking Particles

[DaliFan]

anyway you can give a basic tut of that? very cool

[fxgogo]

looks good. what about an animation?

[creart]

Thanx DaliFan!!!

On the risk of writing the nth tut on Thinking Particles I'll try to keep it short - Search the forum for detailed ones (like Mdme Sadies - thx for the principle!)

First add a null object (In this case Light Emitter) and give it an Xpresso expression. Drag the object in the opening Xpresso editor and give it the ouputs as shown in the left top of the image (click on blue box in node for inputs , red box for outputs and finally drag connection lines from output to input to connect what ever you need).
Add a PStorm node; this is the one that's going to make the thinking particles - it will use the position from 'Light emitter', so it will look like 'Light Emitter' is the actual emitter
Add a PGroup node - it is best to put particles in a group so you're able to handle each group of particles you might make separately.
Add the actual group in the TP Settings window and drag that group that I named 'emitter' to the PGroup node.
Then you need a PShape node- this places an object (in this case 'Light' - again just drag the object to the node) on every particle that's born.

Make sure you add a Particle Geometry object from plugins to your scene - to make sure that the PShapes get 3d geometry for Cinema to show!!!!

This part puts the particles in the scene, now get the particles to stick to an object instead of just flying around...

Add a PPass node and drag the 'emitter' group (from the TP settings window) to it - this allows all the data of that particle group to be used as input for other nodes.
Here we add a PSurfacePosition (with dragged 'tubeCenterGlowing' object) to serve as 'sticky object'. I used 'edge' setting in the AM (attribute manager') to have the particles connected to the edge of the object (other options are vertices or face).

Finally add a PSetData node. This uses the particle information from the 'emitter' group and the edge -position information from 'tubeCenterGlowing' to change (or Set) the position of particles to place them on the edge of the surface you defined.


Ok, for the rest of the scene...
I started with a simple right spline, extruded (very thin) and made editable - this is 'tubeCenterGlowing' - the line that holds the lights
Added a capsule with glass texture to be the neon tube (obviously this is in the same spot as the spline)
Modelled a simple fitting on both ends of the tube and grouped the lot.

I added a floor to be the watersurface and a fractal terrain as riverbed to show through just a bit.
The floor has two textures - one has a blue-ish colour, transparency with refraction 1.33 (water), some spec and noisebump.
The other texture has high specular and an SLA fusion (as shown on the pic) - both channels use a tile - one with circle (make sure to enlarge the scale so one circle fits the image, i think scale 1000 will do) with a high bevel so you can use this as a sort of soft edge mask for the other channel - the spiral
Plave the textue flat on the floor (no tiling) and place it so that the center of the spiral fits the crossing of tube and floor - this gives the ripples on the water.
Finally I placed a 'normal' emitter to give the waterdrops on the waterentrypoint of the tube - added a sphere with a larger y-scale so there elongated and put the total emitter in a metaball-object so that the drops flow together (have to fiddle with the settings) instead of just having lots of tiny spheres flowing around. These have transparant texture with low refrac setting.

I think that about covers it - it might take a long time to render, look at the amount of lights on the rightbottom - if you have any questions please let me know, I'll be glad to help!!

Cheers

[creart]

Hi Fxgogo,

that's certainly something that I want to do and since I use particles for the neontube it will really look like it' starting to glow, instead of just 'be on' ,'cause all particles sort of walk over the center of the tube
One problem is that I don't really know how to show an animation on the forum, and I don't have my internetsite worked out yet, so that's a bit of a problem... but as soon as I have the site up and running I'll put a gallley on there!!!!

[flingster]

good work bud....make sure you put that quick tut on your site when you get it up and running...thanks for sharing...:applause:

[DaliFan]

creart thanks a lot for sharing.. and in a way I could understand :)

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